hi i understnad the sony dw-u18a is a lite-on in disguise, having had it for a 2 months now with absolutly no problem whatsoever,it suddenly wont read or write anything,regardless if dvd or cd..... just the led flashing orange on the front the whole time......PLEASE HELP!

ive cheked the frimware its uys1

p.s. ive tried to re-flash the firmware,when i do this it flashes green then goes back to orange again,its says the firmwares match exactly anyway so no need to flash i supose

try to patch with this firmware VS0B

run it through OmniPatcher to enable crossflashing and other tweaks you need.

you are an absolute gem!
did exactl what you said......works a treat,thank you very very very much

works like a dream now
thanks!
woooooooooooooohoooooooooooo!

You didn't happen to recently use a utility called RPCDE or RPCDE2, which is a region free utilty?

yeah i did! what did you have in mind
i thought it was that which buggered it,
after flashing it with the lite-on firmware it works fine,but says its a lite-on any way i can reflash it with original firmware to undo the rpcde2 thing

Liteon firmwares are better than Sony ones.

The RPCDE/RPCDE2 tools were not designed for Sony/Liteon DVD writers and they damage the checksum in the drives eeprom. Unless the eeprom is repaired you will always have to use the cross flash patch on any firmware you decide to use.

ahh i see so from now on any firmware flashes must have the cross flash patch
i take it there is no way or repairing the eeprom? or is there?

you can flash a backup of YOUR eeprom back on the drive, if you have one....

i dont have one, so is it possibe to get one from someone who has the same drive?

no, stay with yours. if you flash one from another drive your calibration data could get messed up and you will get coasters.

I have the same problem as he does.

But mine i can read DVDRW/DVDR/DVD discs, but when i put a blank DVD disc it dosent want to give me the space left.

Doing the flash method above only messed things up, now it just flashes orange and no longer wantes to accept any DVD discs or anything.

I was able to copy blank CDR/RW before as it accepted them.

I have not used any region hacks.

What should i do? Now i no longer have access to my DVD anymore since it dosent work and i dont have the original bios.

Help me please thanks,

Your drive is fine . It just needs the right firmware to work. I would point you in the right direction for the firmware but you have not even given you drives model number or the version you tried to flash, so I will point you to this page on my site. It has instructions and links to the firmware you will need to fix your drive.

hey thanks for the quick reply. I am from Australia btw ^_^.

Ok, i noticed you mentioned something about cross refrence or something. So i re ran the thing on that setting, i didnt click apply reconmended settings(tried with and without) now it seems i am back to what i had before.

CDRW works, normal DVD's work, but i cant seem to put blank DVD's in.

The brand i have was the same thing this guy had, same bios version.

The blank disc i am using is

Verbatim DVD+R 4.7GB

I have copied data before to these, but i was too lazy for the past few months, and wanted to back some data recently, but when i try it wont let me ..i dont want to put them on CDRW since i have nearly 30GB of data to be put in DVD's.

G'day mate.

If your using nero don't forget to select your drive from the dropdown list with DVD after it (not CDRW). If this isn't your problem, then check out this post.

Do you have MSnN or something where we can talk ?

It seems there is something really odd.

Ok first to answer your Q about nero, yea i did pick DVD.

Also shouldnt Windows say the DVD has 4.7GB free anyway?

I followed your guide there, i found the rom for my one, ie usy1, flashed it, i ran the recommended settings, and tick 3 boxes, faster 8x/cross and auto bistering( i tried without as well at first), it seems i am back to SQ1, just like before, DVD's read, ie FarCry DVD, CDRW blanks read, and so does CD's...it simply wont read the DVD+R.

I will try Nero again , but if i am not mistaken if Windows read 0 bytes used/0bytes free it must be something else.

Any advice?

EDIT:
I am following that post, i will give feedback after i give that a shot.

According to Nero Tool , supported read/write features it dosent support DVD+R...is this normal? How cauld this be tho..i have copied to these discs....

I would suggest you flash to VY06. UYS1 is very old in firmware time. Follow the same instruction, on the page I provided, for 812S@832S. Don't forget to enable crossflashing in the VY06 firmware, by using OmniPatcher.

There is something odd...

Nero Tool also says the disc has 4.38GB Free...but when i run nero express i didnt notice this before, but from the pulldown menu i cant pick my DVDRW..only Image Recorder DVD/CDRW..ie make ISO file only...something is odd...

I will flash to VY06 and give it a shot..but it seems i am missing something..some kinda driver in here

Make sure you reboot after the flash, and a trick that sometimes sorts out the driver, is to change your drive from master to slave or slave to master, depending on your configuration.

Tried the firmware u said...still same results. nero tool still says dosent support DVD+R, but disc info in nero tool says DVD+R and 4.38 GB free.

I also tried swithing them arround, the DVDRW

My old Setup

SATA HDD(Main HDD 120GB)
Secondary Master : 80GB
Primary Slave: DVDRW

I changed it to
Left SATA alone
Primary Master VDRW
Secondary Slave 80GB

Still the samething...

I am using a program called DeepBurner Pro, it seems to be working, it is copying as we speak..so i guess it was mainly a software issue before. I will test and see if it works, it is burning at 8x..but the DVD only supports 1-4X...eitherway it is burning, and i hope it works

It seems it was the software afterall..that program deepburner worked like a charm

I'm pleased to hear that.

Well thanks to you and this site, i did get alot of info about DVDRW's, now i know the place to tell others about problems with DVD's and this is a good source to get firmware/tweaking.

Just last question...what is dual layer burning? Does my DVDRW support it?

Also everything is copying perfectly i ran a few tests before deleting them, and its working like a charm .